Gluing up the 16" top

Dimensioning the legs

Chopping all eight mortises

I read a comment on a woodworking forum last night stating: “I wouldn’t take a Sawstop table saw if you gave me one for free!” Or at least that’s what it said in paraphrase. That got me to thinking. If Sawstop offered to give you a free table saw would you take it? No strings attached, no cost, nothing, just a free saw out of the goodness of the company’s heart.
Or lets say you really love your table saw and wouldn’t want to give it up, so Sawstop came up with a free adder to retrofit your current saw with their safety technology free of charge. Would you take that offer? I’m curious to find out the answers here, because there is a lot of backlash against Sawstop and many claim that price has nothing to do with it. So please feel free to comment and let me know what your reasoning is either way. Thanks.

Over the past several months I’ve made fuzzy mention about SketchUp classes for 2014, and I’ve been receiving requests for a schedule. Before I go out on a limb, I’d like to gauge the interest of my audience about class … Continue reading →

We spent hundreds of hours developing our Classic Leg Vise, which includes lots of time researching historic forms.

Most of our research takes the form of hunting down early photographs, which appear in everything from vintage tool catalogs to postcards. We also keep our eye out for ancient workbenches in modern contexts, like Ebay, auction catalogs, and lifestyle magazines. The latter is our favorite source, purely for the entertainment factor. Our image collection of bastardized benches is enough to make any woodworker cringe.


But now and then we stumble on a real gem, like the picture above from a school for disabled  veterans.

One thing we found interesting. It seems shortly after Roubo's time, and the advance of the industrial revolution, that at least in France (and its colonies in North Africa like Algeria and Tunisia) the vast majority of extant benches featured metal vise screws, not wood. Why fewer wood screws? I think in a school or commercial setting, the metal screws were probably viewed as more durable, and with mass production coming into play, they could be made quickly and cheaply.

French leg vise screws invariably feature a metal hub and handle. English and American versions almost always use a cast "T" with sliding wood handle. We chose the French version to allow our handle to center up repeatably and reliably (this is nearly impossible with wood) and also because the cast "T" version is already available from other tool makers such as Lie-Nielsen.

We've uploaded some of our research images here.

Some customers who purchased the electronic version of “Campaign Furniture” encountered some problems with the pdf – some of the photos looked like photographic negatives.

The explanation is long, but the solution is short: If you ordered the electronic version you should have received an e-mail from us that a new file is available. This new file looks fine on all the devices we’ve tested so far.

If you did not receive an e-mail, check your junk mail for it and then send an e-mail to John at john@lostartpress.com or me at chris@lostartpress.com. We’ll fix you up.

— Christopher Schwarz

Filed under: Campaign Furniture

There is an event in the USA that will shortly unfold with regards to the final work of Aldren Watson.

I have written often of the legacy Aldren Watson left in his books and especially one still in print entitled Hand Tools Their Ways and Their Workings. It might be easy to pass over the book without seeing the wisdom, breadth and depth of the man who combined his personal insights into woodworking with drawings and writings for those who follow. The insights are indeed a legacy from a truly humble man and a man I remember with fondness and respect. I recall the conversations I had with Aldren Watson over some of the quiet years of his retirement when he encouraged me not to rely so much on photography but to develop my own skills in sketching the important aspects of my own work.

Over recent months Aldren’s daughter, Clyde Watson, as been working to make Aldrens as yet unpublished book, Waterfront New York, ready for release later this year and we thought this new legacy to be something everyone should know about. You can preorder the book via the attached here. Please visit Aldren’s website for an introduction and perhaps glimpse one of my most favourite illustrating authors. You wont regret it.

  I received a letter from Tim, in Meridian, Idaho last night, and wanted to share it with you here. Tim recently completed a version of my Cabinetmaker’s Toolchest design and really did an amazing job ! ( it’s actually his second chest ) Using...

Keep an old candle on your bench when planing. Rub it on the sole of the plane and you will find it much easier to push. It will not have any ill affects on your finish.

As always thanks for stopping by and feel free to leave a comment.

 Meanwhile I have had a bit of a break from classes until next month so I thought I would do some shop chores. I built this firewood box from 80 year old barn wood from my wife's grandfather's farm.
 I ran out of firewood last month trying to keep up with these record cold temps. I love having some firewood close to the stove during the day. This is a built in unit based on some Shaker styles I have seen.
 Today the weather has been textbook. I went to my favorite log yard (Woodstock Mills) in Scottsville, Ky. and bought the Tennessee state tree, Tulip Poplar (also the Kentucky state tree). These will be sawn into boards to cover the timber frame.
 I have set up the sawmill next to the shed to make things simple. I will nail these boards on green as I saw them.
 I will quarter saw them so they will not shrink too bad. They will dry on the shed before I cover with rigid foam and siding/ roofing. Stay tuned to see the progress.

The most important activity in woodworking is to pass your skills and knowledge to another woodworker that is open to learning. Some of you may be thinking I’m just being dramatic, and the world would be better off if I took up mime. But really what do you need to be able to teach others? […]

  When beginning woodworkers rank the difficulty of the different dovetail joints, they usually think of the through-dovetail as the “bunny slope.” The half-blind dovetail is the “expert slope” – perhaps a blue or a black trail if you are a snow skier. So what’s the full-blind dovetail? Or the secret-mitered dovetail? Throwing yourself off a cliff without a parachute? In my view, the through-dovetail is actually the most difficult […]

The post If You Haven’t Tried Full-blind Dovetails, It’s Time appeared first on Popular Woodworking Magazine.

Last week we took it upon ourselves to determine some of the defining parameters that we felt we should work to, while building the Nicholson bench for the Toledo Woodcraft Store.  There are only a few.  First:  workbench height will be at 34″.  This is a compromise, as the bench will be used by people of varying heights.  The ideal way to judge correct bench height for a bench to be used for handwork is to measure from the floor to the wrist of the user, or (and probably more ergonomically correct) from the crease of the buttocks to the floor.  Of course, this would be the user’s buttocks (old timers regularly “hiked one cheek up” on the bench while cutting mortises, in fact there are benches built for the sole purpose of mortising and they are typically knee height, so one could sit “astraddle” of the workpiece).  Second: simply enough, was to build the bench heavy.  A workbench cannot be too heavy or too long.  Let me repeat that, a workbench cannot be too heavy or too long.  However, a workbench can be too high and/or too wide.  So, be advised.  (Save time, save money, learn from the mistakes of countless thousands of craftsman who thought they had a better way, that’s how “standards” got started.)  And third:  use the most effective joinery methods.  This translates into joinery that is not only pretty, but joinery that will stand up to repetitive movement and stress.  So, now it begins in earnest.

Above is 2/3′s of today’s crew ripping stock for the leg sets.  Between Carl, Les and I, we’ve got over a hundred years of woodworking experience.  What does that mean in real terms?  It means we’ve made a whole lot of mistakes over the years.  A whole lot of mistake that you don’t necessarily have to make yourself.   Readers of this blog should realize that everything we’re doing here can be done with hand tools.  Only thing is it would take a whole lot longer.

So the first things we’ll build are the two leg “sets”.  Here’s a little “cartooned” illustration.  Dimensions aren’t important.  And remember, you can use almost any lumber, durability is the driving factor.  Just remember, it should be of a proper thickness to allow a holdfast to work efficiently.

 

We’re moving now and it won’t be long until we complete the bench.  But in the meantime, I’m wishing for warming temperatures because this is what is just outside my front door.  Is it Ohio or is it Siberia?  You be the judge.  My Norwegian friends will surely enjoy this.

We’ll have this thing put together well before we play our first round of golf (June 1?).

 

     

The post Music I’d Like To Hear #71 appeared first on Doug Berch.

This one’s for all the woodworkers who are happy to be on the disavowed list…

Am I the only woodworker that thinks most woodworking plans suck?

Before I start, I will be forthright and admit that I often don’t follow woodworking plans, at least not to the letter. When I start a project, I will usually draw up a rough sketch with the dimensions I am looking to achieve and go from there. However, some of my sketches are not fully original and are sometimes based off pre-existing furniture and/or from already published plans. It is during those moments that having plans with at least some degree of certainty would really come in handy. Unfortunately, most woodworking plans are very, very vague; as in “What?”. Lately, I’ve been looking at and making chests, firstly because Kate Upton is hot, and secondly because I recently made several and my wife wants me to make another. While making a box may sound pretty straightforward, it sometimes can be a little more tricky than would be thought. For instance, attaching a lid to a box is not always easy, or at least not always easy to do it correctly. One plan I looked at for a blanket chest simply said “mortise the back for the hinges and attach the lid when the case dries.” Another plan didn’t even make mention of attaching the lid at all! It just assumed that the reader would figure out a way to do it. I don’t know about any of you, but the reason I subscribe to and read woodworking magazines is to pick up helpful little tips and tricks for performing tasks such as attaching a lid to a blanket chest. No offense, but an article on making a piece of furniture probably should contain information that will actually help you make it.

Am I the only woodworker that thinks the “Roubo” workbench is a huge waste of wood?

My own experiences with workbenches is not all that extensive. I’ve used the benches at the handful of woodworking classes that I took over the past few years, and I’ve messed around with the benches at tool shows and woodworking stores whenever I had the chance. When it came time to make my own bench, I built one based on the “French” workbench. For the record, it’s been a good bench for me, and for a while it was the only frame of reference I had for a bench that was made specifically for woodworking. As far as I was aware, most woodworking benches were similar to my own, and after taking a few classes with benches that were like my home bench, the nature of workbench design was a topic that I stopped giving a lot of thought to. Then, I attended a Lie Nielsen handtool event which for some reason had a Veritas bench present among all of the Lie Nielsen tools. For whatever reason, I went over to the bench with a board, saw, and a hand plane and messed with it for a few minutes. The bench worked just fine, which was surprising to me considering everything I had read about work benches with “thin” tops and legs. The Veritas bench was only half the size of the bench I have at home, yet I noticed no difference in how I used it. It got me to thinking that I could have made a bench similar to the Veritas at home in half the time and using much less wood. Now, the Nicholson, or “English” workbench has been popping up on woodworking blogs and forums and it seems right up my alley. It is easy to construct and uses half the material of a French bench, and from all appearances looks like it would have no problem doing anything that a larger and heavier bench would do. As for lighter benches “jumping around” during use; I just don’t buy it. At 205lbs, I am neither small nor weak, and I’ve never had a bench “jump” while using it unless I purposely made it happen. I think most of those movement claims are very exaggerated. If you are making a 200lb bench move while you are using it, whatever you are doing will also make a 300lb bench move. If you are that worried about your bench moving, stick it on a rubber matt instead of making it a foot thick; you’ll save a lot of time, money, and wood.

Am I the only woodworker that thinks tools are becoming overvalued?

I’ve slowly come to the realization that amateur woodworkers are overvaluing their tools. What do I mean by this? It seems to me that more and more we are being sold on the value of tools; which tools to buy, how to care for them, how to store them etc. and less regard is given to the actual furniture we are making. How many times do you read stories about “the old time craftsman” and how he lovingly stored and protected his tools and passed them on to his son when he retired. Know why he did that? Because his tools were his livelihood. The old time craftsmen sold all of the furniture they made, they didn’t get to keep it and in general they wouldn’t even be able to afford to purchase what they were building. I would bet that if the woodworkers of yesteryear did keep the furniture they made those pieces would have been even more lovingly cared for and passed on from generation to generation than a tool set.
I’m not blameless here; I fell into the same trap; I found myself becoming a tool worshipper and not a furniture maker. Being a tool worshiper doesn’t mean you have a lot of expensive tools or even a lot cheap ones. A tool worshipper woodworks to use tools, not build furniture. A tool worshipper worries much more about the sharpness of his chisels than the usefulness of his current project. A tool worshiper spends more time on his tools than he does on projects, period. Like I said earlier, look at the plans in a woodworking magazine; they are often afterthoughts, but an article on sharpening a saw will have a dozen detailed photos and drawings of the process.
I’m not trying to undervalue tools, but I am trying to put more value on what I make. I woodwork to make things, not play with tools. Don’t get me wrong, I like tools, I enjoy owning them and caring for them, but I like making things more. At that, I say own as many tools as you can afford and use them all, just try to remember why you have them. I’m not trying to tell anybody what to do here; do whatever you like. But I want to make furniture.

To see Day 1 of the class, Build a Continuous Arm Windsor Chair with Peter Galbert, CLICK HERE

DAY 2:

DAY 3:

Using angled mirrors (no smoke!) and reference guides set with the correct angles the student is able to drill the holes in the seat blank at the correct splay and rake needed for the chair to sit as designed:

DAY 4:

With scorp, travisher, drawknife and spokeshave, the shield-style shaped chair bottom is sculptued forth.  The seat is scooped out with the scorp and travisher and the unique outside shield pattern is created with the drawknife and spokeshave:

The post Build a Continuous Arm Windsor Chair with Peter Galbert – Days 2, 3, and 4 appeared first on Woodworking Blog.

Sure the Polar Vortex has piled up a few feet of snow, but it’s time to start prepping for some Spring renovation projects. I’m sure at some point I’m going to be facing a stuck screw during one or two of those “to-do” list items I’ll be tackling as the weather warms up and the icecaps recede.

Rather than doing what I normally do when I’m faced with a stuck screw I think I’ll try one of these 5 methods of stubborn screw removals that the folks over at M&M Tool Parts wrote about recently.

“Typically caused by the inevitable rust and corrosion that occurs inside a screw hole, a stuck screw can be an incredibly frustrating thing to work with.

Not only can it slow a project down, but it can throw a wet wool blanket over anybody’s good mood. This corrosion effectively locks a screw into place and removing the thing can potentially destroy the screw itself or, worse yet, the material it’s embedded in.

Fortunately, though, there are few sure-fire methods that will help you remove a stuck screw with relative ease and minimal annoyance.”

From “Chemical Warfare” to “Total Annihilation” you’ll probably find a few new ways to tackle a stuck screw without screwing up your project!

Checkout the article and all the great suggestions over at www.mmtoolparts.com.

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Another 1-to-1 spoon carving day, this time with Dan Lawrence who I’ve watched developing his skills over the last few years and is now aiming to make his living from greenwood carving. He came on my short course at Spoonfest … Continue reading →

  “In Days of yore, from Britain’s shore Wolfe, the dauntless hero, came And planted firm Britannia’s flag On Canada’s fair domain. Here may it wave, our boast, our pride And,  joined in love together, The lily, thistle, shamrock, rose, The Maple Leaf Forever!”  ...

Our latest book, “Campaign Furniture,” is now available in our store for immediate shipment from our warehouse. Domestic orders placed before April 5, 2014, will receive free shipping.

The cost is $33 for the hardbound book. A pdf download of the book is $14. Or you can order both for $39. Full details are available in our store here.

“Campaign Furniture” will also be available from retailers here and abroad. Shipments of the book are on their way to these retailers, though we do not know when they will begin selling it. Here are the retailers that have agreed to stock the book:

• Lee Valley Tools
• Lie-Nielsen Toolworks
• Tools for Working Wood
• Highland Woodworking
• United Kingdom: Classic Hand Tools: www.classichandtools.co.uk
• Australia: Henry Eckert www.henryeckert.com.au

Like all Lost Art Press books, “Campaign Furniture” is produced entirely in the United States. The book is in a 6” x 9” format and hardbound. The interior is in full color and printed on paper that is heavy and coated with a matte finish for readability. The interior signatures are sewn for long-term durability.

All copies sold through the Lost Art Press web site are signed by the author via a letterpress bookplate.

— Christopher Schwarz

Filed under: Campaign Furniture

A few weeks ago we had a phone call from our good friend Richard Arnold who had a little something which he wanted to offer to me and was able to come out our way. We don’t get out much so we jumped at the chance and planned to meet up with Richard and his wife Kate in Lincoln. It was Saturday and fairly busy but we managed to get the car parked and headed off to find them. After trekking up the well named ‘Steep Hill’ which is always good fun, we got another buzz just to let us know that they were waiting inside a small coffee shop. I turned around and bugger me, there he was sat by the window with me still sweating buckets not having had any sneaky cool off time from the climb!

It’s always a pleasure chatting with Richard and Kate and quite rare to find people as passionate about traditional woodwork as we are. If you’ve ever met Bill and Sarah Carter then you’ll know exactly what I mean by saying that Richard and Kate are likely cut from the same cloth; they’re just incredibly genuine, generous and passionate and never ask for anything. It’s a lovely place to be in the woodworking world when there’s great people like this, you can never say that old crafts are dead. Whilst enjoying our tea I couldn’t help but notice how Richard was looking around and taking note of all of the woodwork in the little old room – fascinated with the joinery on the wall panels and windows. I always think you can tell a craftsman by how he looks over something; give him an item of steel and he will look straight to the welds.

There was an extra gift which I hadn’t been expecting; Richard presented me with a lovely little book, but more on that one latter. The main thing which he’d brought along was waiting in his car because it was too heavy to carry, so after a good natter we headed out to find it.
The car was parked just around the corner near the cathedral. We were parked down the other way so we set off on what turned in to an epic journey across time and space, a seemingly endless voyage. Basically, Richard had forgot where he parked his bloody car. After a few near domestics and the constant “well, it’s around here somewhere” we stumbled in to the help of a very well spoken man in yellow trousers and did finally find it. There it was – the leg vice I’d heard about. Richard had told me this screw was big but I wasn’t quite expecting this. The thing weighed like a bag of cement, and we took it in shifts walking it back in to Lincoln where we eventually parted way and then Helen and I spent at least another age trying to find where we’d parked our own car.When I heard about this screw I was hoping the same as what Richard was suggesting which was to install it in to my English bench which I’m currently building but I don’t think that bench is quite up to it. It’s not nearly posh enough and I’m going to need a bloody big leg to fit this in. Besides that, the second I saw it I had this other bench flash in front of my face which I’m really going to have to build now – so that’s another thing that will be added to the agenda.

When it comes to vice screws I tend to recommend wooden over metal. I love wood so it makes sense to use it and a really large diameter, large pitch thread is unbeatably smooth. That was before I saw this thing! This thread is as big as our wooden screws, it turns at the same pace, and it is just absolutely stunning in every way – Beautiful and smooth.
Richard had had the vice stored away for so long that he couldn’t recall where he found it. I’m usually pretty good at guessing where vices originated and I’ve stared at enough pictures to surmise but this isn’t like anything I’ve seen. If I was just looking at the thread and nut then I would definitely think it was straight out of the steel industry but the big, beautiful rounded head on it and two piece garter make me feel it has always been a craftsman’s vice, it’s too decorative otherwise. I think Richard suggested it could have come out of a wheelwright’s shop and that would make sense – it had to be for something very heavy duty.We don’t get about an awful lot but we really enjoyed our day in Lincoln. We’re lucky to have such a wonderful city not far away and walking around it is always inspiring. When a place has such a number of important historical buildings you realise that we’re not likely to let our crafts die any time soon. There’s restoration and heritage work going on everywhere, the last time I went much of the Cathedral was covered in scaffolding and now some has been removed to reveal a number of new and spectacular carvings in the stone work. There’s a constant stream of craftsman being trained up and employed at the Cathedral and Castle here and it’s certainly great to know there’s so much skill all in one place.

So thanks again Richard and Kate for what was a lovely day.